Validated Risk Identification Tool for ICT in International Development Co-Operation Projects
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Date
2014
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Abstract
Literature shows that there are a number of different frameworks for managing international
development co-operation (IDC) projects. Those frameworks have their own strengths and
weaknesses and they vary from being highly abstract to relatively practical. However, none
of the frameworks provide help in situations where IT professionals are incapable to identify
potential project risks when entering a new project milieu. The situation is common in the
context of IDC projects. For this purpose, Kemppainen et al. (2012) designed a taxonomybased
risk identification tool. The tool addresses potential risks by 55 quantified yes/noquestions.
The quantification specifies the significance of each issue to project success. The
tool is aimed at guiding IT professionals, planners, donors, field staff, and other stakeholders
to identify and mitigate potential threats that may materialize in an unfamiliar project context.
The tool’s questions were designed based on the literature analysis, their classification into
five groups was derived from Tedre et al. (2011), and their taxonomy based scoring was
derived from the researchers’ own data. Hence, the tool lacked wider empirical evidence.
This study validated the tool based on empirical data of a sample of 83 IT experts and IT
department leaders from a number of organizations, institutes, universities and international
development co-operation projects in Tanzania. The mode value of the Likert-scale
questionnaire answers were used to adjust the question-scoring scheme, and reliability
analysis were conducted for testing internal consistency of the question groups’ questions.
Systematic reorganization of the questions with reliability analysis and content considerations
led to three distinct question groups instead of the five original ones. In addition, two of the
original questions were combined together due to their similarity. Hence, the validated risk
identification tool contains three question groups, namely; Institutional, Societal, and
Technical characteristics, including totally 54 quantified questions. Those three question
groups determine the risk level of the prospective project.
Description
Keywords
Risk identification, ICT for development, ICT4D, ICT projects, International development cooperation
Citation
Kemppainen, J., Mpogole, H., Tedre, M. and Chachage, B., 2014. Validated Risk Identification Tool for ICT in International Development Co-operation Projects. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 64.